Inkjet technology has expanded its application to high-speed, commercial and industrial printing, in addition to home and office usage. This technology is a non-impact printing method in which an electronic signal controls and directs droplets or a stream of ink that can be deposited on a wide variety of substrates. Current inkjet printing technology involves forcing the ink drops through small nozzles by thermal ejection, piezoelectric pressure or oscillation, onto the surface of a media.
There are several reasons that inkjet printing has become a popular way of recording images on various media surfaces, particularly paper. Some of these reasons include low printer noise, capability of high-speed recording, high quality and multi-color recording. Additionally, these advantages can be obtained at a relatively low price to consumers. However, though there has been great improvement in inkjet printing, accompanying this improvement are increased demands by consumers in this area, e.g., higher speeds, higher resolution, full color image formation, increased stability, more permanent images, etc.
Sets of inkjet inks are used in color inkjet printing systems. The ink set often includes a plurality of different colored inks, commonly in groups of four, six or eight colors (e.g., one or more shades of cyan, magenta, yellow and/or black), and may further include an image fixing/fixer fluid. The fixer fluid is often applied before or after an ink is established on the print media surface. The fixer fluid is a substantially colorless liquid that interacts with the colorant and/or polymeric components of the ink(s) to thereby precipitate or otherwise fix the ink(s) to the print media surface.
The precipitated colorants deposit on the surface of the media, which results in the enhancement of image quality attributes, for example, optical density and chroma. Durability attributes like water-fastness and highlighter smear also benefit from such reactive ink chemistry. Although several suitable ink sets including a fixer fluid are currently available, improvements thereto are desirable to formulate more durable and reliable inks that will produce higher quality print images on the print media surface without damaging the printhead containing it.